Pitchfork

Evan Dando doesn't look like any of the crackheads I've come across in my time. He doesn't have pipe burns on his lips, he's never told me his car just broke down, or that he needs another five dollars to buy a bus ticket back home, but this bright-eyed son of Brookline is indeed a recovering addict of said severity, a one-time court jester whose self-abuse painted him into a major corner. While it's a tiny corner, and a tiny stage-- relative to the superstar status and corollary horse habit that drove his doppelganger Tigerbeat bad-guy to suicide-- Dando's internalized enough commercial and critical failure over the last ten years to build up quite a tolerance. I hope.

A girl I knew in high school wandered into Evan Dando's Martha's Vineyard crash pad during his first or second of many lost summers in the mid 1990s. I'm sure you've seen Boogie Nights; it was about that bad, and the soundtrack was exactly the same. Within a matter of minutes, he offered her the pipe and blazed away. She politely refused in her shy, teenage way, but wasn't fazed; she didn't come away shocked, appalled or even depressed about his low state, she just told everyone \x93I met Evan Dando and he was soooooo hot!\x94 With my pitiful stash and Elmer's pallor, I looked like chopped liver after that, so thanks a lot Evan. You're going to learn about pain, my friend: see that blonde mug on the cover of the record, girls? Look closer. That's Evan Dando's wife. People Magazine's Sexiest Man Alive 1993 is off the table.

Producer Bryce Goggin nearly turned the Lemonheads' cathartic 1996 finale Car Button Cloth into psych-rock with his impossibly compressed, throbbing overproduction, but his hand only helped underscore the desperation it documented. Where the Dando-led Lemonheads' early, glossier pop was so effortless, the grubby, duct-taped sound applied to the same simple songs increased their resonance if it killed their marketability. On Baby I'm Bored, Goggin continues where he left off, and almost makes this record worth listening to: his masterful use of space, the almost direct-recorded vocal tracks and live-- but still punchy-- drum kit bring out the best in these aimless tunes, recorded whenever, wherever over the last few years.

The bookend tracks are the least cohesive, lobbing limp T. Rex and later Texarkana riffs over a dog-tired, deflated rhythm section that probably thought they had a killer groove going in their late-night haze. Though the closing minute of \x93In The Grass All Wine Colored\x94 is a soft kiss, the two minutes before its arrival feel like twenty; as always, Dando's best stuff is sticky sweet, but two of the four classically cute ditties on here were actually written by one of his biggest fans, Ben Lee (who, while in Noise Addict, penned the ultimate teenage envy anthem \x93I Wish I Was Him\x94 about Dando). \x93All My Life\x94 is essentially a slowed-down, simplified redux of \x93The Outdoor Type\x94 from Car Button Cloth-- one of The Lemonheads' hokier moments-- but the Frampton guitar winding throughout rebirths a spindly country shuffle, and an honest apology (if he didn't write it himself).

Dando offers but two traditional Lemonheads tunes, the long-coming, long-titled \x93The Same Thing You Thought Hard About Is The Same Part I Can Live Without\x94, previously available in promising acoustic form on the Aussie-only Live At The Brattle Theater disc from 2001. Backed by distorted electrics and tambourines, the chorus is too staged by verse-chorus-verse pacing, killing the balladeer beaming that made fans hold out hope their shaggy savior was back on track; it finally disintegrates into a sloppily assembled finale. \x93My Idea\x94 houses a brilliantly toned guitar solo as its central bridge, but it's not paired with the bittersweet vocals you'd hope for, merely more of the depressed mumbling Dando's resigned himself to. The only real bright spot on Baby I'm Bored is its third and longest song, an organic, psychedelic guitar anthem influenced as much by the Monkees' \x93Porpoise Song\x94 as the Television Personalities' They Could Have Been Bigger Than The Beatles (Dando's been seriously namedropping TVP in advance of this album).

As with his last two releases, Baby I'm Bored is gutted by under-worked, inconsequential two-minute ideas like \x93Why Do You Do This To Yourself?\x94 and the collaboration-fascinated \x93Waking Up\x94, a needless, shaking duet with Spacehog's Royston Langdon that longs for a real chorus. Langdon's wife Liv Tyler duets with Dando on a re-recording of \x93Shots Is Fired\x94, a retread of his excellent cover of Victoria Williams' \x93Frying Pax94 from the Heavy soundtrack (a film he and Tyler were feature players in), but that better, brighter version is only available as the B-side for the advance UK single \x93Stop My Head\x94, an open-chord, toy-piano placeholder without much to offer beyond lushly doubled vocals.

You may not know that Evan Dando lives about two blocks from where the World Trade Center formerly stood, that the second plane flew right over his head, and that this trauma is in large part responsible for the sobriety that produced most of Baby I'm Bored. For his personal victories, Dando is still viewed as a privileged prep school rock star, an unserious flake that continues to cash in on good looks and teenage hooks; this record is not going to change that situation, and as with his more severe but equally criticized female counterpart-- the vexed Chan Marshall-- recent live shows are a gamble at best, especially in hipster havens and major cities. For all the advance press, if you've seen Dando lately, you may already know the pressure has knocked him a few paces behind the wagon. Keeping tabs on a guy that smoked crack for three straight months and freebased weeks away, no one minds his lips all wine-colored, but whether he retains his sobriety or slips, Baby I'm Bored is Dando taking on a second, and from the sound of things more difficult rehabilitation: his career.